Judgment: Advertising calls by contract are not permissible

Advertisements by contract – The Oberlandesgericht Köln has decided that mobile service providers are no longer allowed to contact their customers for advertising purposes when their contracts have expired. The vzbv had complained against a corresponding clause in the Telekom AGB.

Advertisements by contract

According to the Oberlandesgericht Cologne, mobile telephony customers do not have to accept advertising calls from their provider after the end of the contract period. The Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband had complained against the Telekom, which granted itself this right in the in-house GTC.

Interested parties who concluded a mobile telephony agreement of the company agreed to a clause in the General Terms and Conditions, which allowed Telekom to contact customers for advertising purposes after the contract. Specifically, this should be the case by the end of the year following the end of the contract and the channels e-mail, telephone, SMS and MMS are used. Revocation was possible at any time.

Vzbv complains against Telekom

The vzbv saw an unfair disadvantage in this clause, because it unified several contact points and allowed the contact for an unreasonably long period after the end of the contract. “Not all consumers can know what the power is about. Later, they would have to take the initiative to restore their undisturbed privacy, “said Heiko Dünkel, lawyer at vzbv.

The Oberlandesgericht Hamburg saw this similar and prohibited the use of the passage under the 6 U 182/16 file. In the previous instance, the Telekom had still succeeded with this. In the eyes of the judges, the clause violates the prohibition of harassing advertising. “It allows the company to use the contract data of a consumer to a considerable extent to the” individual customer consultation “on the telephone. In the worst-case scenario, the consumer has not been a customer for almost two years and has probably been the customer of a competitor since the time the contract was concluded, “it says. There is no permission for an exact definition.

The revision at the Federal Court of Justice was permitted. Mainly because it is still open, whether a separate consent has to be obtained for the different advertising channels.